Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top five articles, stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your friends and church families. We would be very grateful if you could make a donation of $100, $50, $25, or $10 today towards our work producing these Friday Fives and fighting for your values on the public square!
1. NC VALUES: Help needed with our standards
We need your help. Bureaucrats are attempting to change N.C. law which requires the teaching of abstinence-based sex education. The law specifically requires that “abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage be taught as an expected standard of behavior for all school-aged children.”
The NC Board of Education is in the process of revising the standards for health education. Standards are the educational goals required to be achieved in each course.
Draft 1 of those standards does not follow NC’s law requiring that sexual abstinence outside of marriage be taught as an expected standard of behavior. In fact, it doesn’t mention marriage at all! Rather, the standards reflect the teaching of comprehensive sex education. As you may know, most comprehensive sex education is either written or endorsed by Planned Parenthood.
This is where you come in. We need a couple hundred of you who have the time and are able to help us with a big ask below.
Read more: https://ncvalues.org/help-needed-with-our-standards/
2. NEWS & OBSERVER: NC schools want delay in enacting ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights.’ Will they get more time?
“Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, said delaying implementation only deprives parents of their legal rights.
‘Every school district in North Carolina has an attorney who can read and interpret the Parents’ Bill of Rights in order to implement the law,’ Fitzgerald said in a statement. ‘Much of the law is common sense, for instance not offering sexually graphic and gender confusing materials to children in kindergarten through fourth grade. A delay in implementing the law only gives activists room to create policies and advise school districts how to skirt the law. We encourage the General Assembly to stand strong on the effective date of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which is desperately needed to protect parents and school children from indoctrination.'”
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article279023364.html
3. CAROLINA JOURNAL: Mark Harris announces bid for Congress
“Former congressional candidate, Pastor Mark Harris, a Republican, announced Tuesday morning that he will make a third try for Congress, despite the controversial 2018 election that saw Harris’ victory overturned due to allegations of ballot fraud. The announcement follows sitting Congressman Dan Bishop’s announcement that he will not run for his seat again, seeking instead to be elected North Carolina’s attorney general in 2024.
‘After seeing first hand the manufactured scandal that resulted in the Democrat controlled State Board of Elections not certifying our victory in 2018, I am one of the few people who truly understands the extremes Democrats will go to in order to advance their woke, leftist agenda,’ Harris stated in the announcement.”
Read more: https://www.carolinajournal.com/mark-harris-announces-bid-for-congress/
4. NORTH STATE JOURNAL: Cooper courts controversy naming Riggs new justice
“Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper defied convention once again in naming a Supreme Court Justice, elevating Court of Appeals judge Allison Riggs to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Riggs, whose only professional experience prior to being named to the Court of Appeals was working as a litigator with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, will be the youngest female justice in state history.
Riggs will fill the vacancy created by Justice Michael Morgan’s resignation earlier this month. Morgan has opened talked of a run for governor in 2024.”
Read more: https://nsjonline.com/article/2023/09/cooper-courts-controversy-naming-riggs-new-justice/
5. CAROLINA JOURNAL: School choice states have lower increases in private school tuition
“A new study from the Heritage Foundation finds that states with expansive school choice have lower private-school tuition rate increases than states without school choice.
The results fly in the face of common arguments from foes of school choice that offerings like North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program will make private schools even more unaffordable.”
WEEKLY PRAYER: FREEDOM
LORD, you have blessed us with a spiritual liberty that is so wonderful and beyond description, that it can only be understood through experiencing a life-giving relationship with Christ. However, we also recognize that in your grace, you have blessed our country with a political liberty that enables us to openly proclaim the experience of a life lived in the freedom of the Gospel.
LORD, as individuals and as a nation, may we never take the inalienable right of religious freedom for granted. Right now our country has faced a rapid increase in the number of attacks made against this cherished right. We have seen groups across our public arena increase in boldness and frequency their smears against religious liberty. They claim it is bigotry, when we know it is the security of the greatest of all possible loves.
Be with your people and our country as it continues to protect the constitutional right protected by our nation’s Founders. Be with legislators and the Supreme Court, as they determine through their actions the protection of this particular and fundamental freedom.
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)
“Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.” (1 Peter 2:16)
Amen
Tami & Team
NC Values
